


A Rush and a Push and the Land is Ours

by 1863



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Extra Treat, Frottage, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-10-23 21:26:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17691362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1863/pseuds/1863
Summary: In the end, there’s only one other person who understands what it means to be a Forgemaster.





	A Rush and a Push and the Land is Ours

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sath/gifts).



> Your prompt was too good to resist. I hope you enjoy the treat!
> 
>   _Prompt: Hector doesn't betray Dracula, and ends up in the desert with Isaac after the ending of S2._

“Did he tell you where to find me?”

Isaac doesn’t sound surprised to see him and Hector doesn’t bother with an excuse. 

“Yes. Just before he—just before.”

Isaac looks around, at the small camp Hector had set up, taking in the fact that it was completely out in the open with no easy way to defend to it. Nothing but a tent, a few trees, and miles upon miles of empty, lifeless sand. 

“Hiding in plain sight, Hector?” he asks.

“Something like that.” 

Hector stands and faces him head on. Isaac’s face is impassive, betraying no thought or feeling, but Hector knows him better than that by now. He’s seen the scars on Isaac’s back; he can guess what they must mean. Neither of them spoke openly about what brought them into Dracula's service but these days, Hector is much better at hearing the things that people left unspoken—the spaces between words, the pauses behind sentences. Often they told him more than what they ever said aloud. Isaac had taught him that, and it had been a very valuable lesson.

“He didn’t send me here to bring you back,” Hector says, getting straight to the point.

“I didn’t expect him to.”

“Yes, you did.” 

Hector’s voice holds no accusation, no sympathy, and—god forbid—no pity. It’s simply a statement of fact, but Isaac still sucks in a breath. It's the only indication he gives of his irritation at Hector's assumption. 

“Perhaps,” Isaac acknowledges, after a pause. “A mistake I will not make again.” He tilts his head to the side, searching Hector’s face. “If he didn’t send you,” he adds slowly, “then why did you come?”

“Is that really the question you want to ask me?”

Isaac looks thrown for a moment but recovers quickly, his uncertainty there and gone in the blink of an eye. Despite everything that’s happened Hector can’t help but smile a little. No one he’s ever met has had convictions as unshakeable as Isaac’s, right or wrong they may be. No one, not even Dracula.

“Does something amuse you, Hector?” 

He thinks of Wallachia, of Breilin, of Gresit. Of bodies torn to pieces, so viciously mutilated he couldn’t even reforge them for the army. Of the countless faces of the dead—men and women and children and babies—twisted and deformed, forever frozen in the throes of unimaginable torture and pain. 

Humanity was a disease but suffering was suffering, regardless of who bore it. 

Hector takes a deep breath.

“No,” he says quietly. “I don't imagine anything will again. At least, not for a very long time.”

Isaac doesn't reply. Hector briefly considers stepping forward and closing the distance a little—if only physically—but just as quickly decides against it. No, he thinks. Too soon. 

Isaac continues to watch him but Hector simply waits him out. Silence has never bothered him; Isaac can stand there all night not saying a word and Hector wouldn’t break.

But Isaac suddenly moves, lightning fast, and before Hector can even lift his arms in defence he’s being shoved against the trunk of a tree, Isaac’s forearm pressing hard against his throat. This close up, his eyes are almost black in the fading light, revealing nothing but Hector’s own surprised reflection. How fitting, Hector thinks distantly, that it should come to this: Dracula’s grief bringing them together; Dracula’s death bringing them closer still. 

“Tell me, Hector,” Isaac says. His voice is very quiet. “What question _should_ I be asking you?”

Hector looks him the eye, unflinching. 

“The thing you most want to know,” he says. Isaac narrows his eyes. “Why did he send you away but keep me by his side?”

Nothing in Isaacs's face changes but Hector knows with absolute certainty that Isaac is suddenly very, very angry. Enraged, even. 

“I know what they used to say about me,” Hector adds quickly. “All of them—Carmilla, Dracula.” Hector licks his lips. “You.” 

He pauses, waiting for a reaction, but Isaac gives him nothing.

“You all thought I was just a child in a man's body,” Hector continues. “That all I wanted was to be left alone in my cottage in the middle of nowhere and surround myself with half-dead pets.” He smiles, then chokes out a laugh when Isaac presses down harder against his throat. “But you and I both know, Isaac,” he says, gasping a little, “that you don't need to be a Forgemaster to do that. Any second-rate necromancer can bring back a dead dog.” 

Hector senses a shift in the angle of Isaac's attention and immediately leans into it. He stops speaking, meeting Isaac's eyes and making no attempt to escape, instead letting his body go soft and pliant against the tree, against Isaac's arm still pressed against his windpipe. 

Isaac frowns, and Hector bites back another smile. For all the things that made Isaac remarkable he was no different to anyone else in this. Everyone had a question burning inside them that they needed an answer to, and once that answer was within reach very few people could resist walking towards it. All Hector had to do was wait. 

The silence stretches on. Isaac tightens his jaw. 

“What does this have to do with—” Isaac pauses, and Hector hears what he's not saying, not showing, in that single quiet heartbeat: his frustration, his anger, and buried so deep even Isaac may not be aware of it, his hurt and his fear. “With why he didn't send you away?” 

Hector risks another small laugh. 

“Everything.”

But Isaac is quick to learn, and this time he says nothing. Hector lowers his eyes in acknowledgement. 

“You all thought that was all I cared about,” he says. “That that was the reason I agreed to be in Dracula's service—to help control the spread of human filth and then be left alone to live in peace. And maybe that's true, in part.” Hector lifts his gaze again, meeting Isaac's eyes. “But I'm a Forgemaster, Isaac. Just like you. We bring _life_ where there is none. We don't just take it away.”

“What does this have to do with my question?” 

Isaac's voice is cool but the pressure on Hector's throat eases a little.

“I'm trying to tell you,” Hector says, “that Dracula kept me with him because eventually, he understood why I agreed to join him in the first place. Not just because I believed in his cause,” Hector adds quickly, seeing the anger flare in Isaac's eyes again. “But because of what I _am._ A Forgemaster. I love my work, Isaac. And with him, I could _work_ —I could create life on a scale I could have never imagined.”

Hector's voice falters a little. Dracula had given him what he'd wanted, yes—to do the work he loved so dearly—but at a cost. An enormous cost, and one that Hector had failed to understand in advance. 

And of all the things he'd thought would make Isaac less suspicious of him, an admission of his own mistakes was not one of them. 

Isaac pulls back, not enough to let him move but enough that Hector can breathe freely again. 

“Is that why he kept you with him?” Isaac asks, derisively. “Because your motivation was more pure than mine?” 

“Purity has nothing to do with it,” Hector replies. “It was strategic, that's all.”

He watches Isaac closely. Tension is still writ large all over him, in his body and in his eyes, but less so than when they'd first started talking. There's a crack in the surface now, Hector knows. All he needs to do is push.

“Isaac,” he adds, voice very soft. “He's dead. He lost. The war is over.” He pauses, just long enough to see something pass over Isaac's face—apprehension, perhaps, or grief. “Can you still not admit it out loud, not even to yourself?” 

“Admit _what_.” 

Isaac's voice is a whip, his words hard and spiked and designed to cause pain. But like the lashes he uses on his own back, they hurt no one but himself. 

Hector is careful not to soften his voice. 

“That you loved him.”

For a brief moment, Isaac goes completely still, not speaking, not blinking, not even breathing. And then he smiles a terrible smile, a bitter twist of lips and a hollow sort of hatred in his eyes that, conversely, makes him seem younger than Hector has ever seen him. 

“There is no such thing as love in this world.”

“That may be true of the world,” Hector says, quick to push his advantage, “but not of you.”

“You know nothing of me,” Isaac spits. 

“I know enough.” Hector leans forward, as much as he can with Isaac still pinning him to the tree. “I know you served Dracula with such unshakeable devotion that it can't have been borne of anything _but_ love. And that in the end, that's why he sent you away and kept me with him instead.”

“I would have thought devotion was something to be cherished, from a soldier in a war.” Isaac’s voice is so calm that it's clear he's anything but. 

“Devotion, yes,” Hector replies. “But love…” Hector trails off. He sees the brittleness in Isaac's face and decides that yes, now is the time to push, to take this as far as it will go. “Love clouds your vision, Isaac. And everything you do—the way you think, the way you act—it's all so linear, so clean, so focused. Dracula couldn't risk your love distorting that.” 

Isaac is silent for a long time, thoughts turned inward. But eventually he refocuses on Hector’s face, eyes narrowed and searching, and what he sees there must be an answer of some kind because he presses in close again, but not—not the way he did before. This is something else altogether, a soft pressure instead of a stone wall; an open window instead of a locked door. 

“Then why did he send you here, before he died? Was he perhaps giving you up as—” Isaac laughs, sharp and mocking. “A substitute?” 

_Oh, Isaac_ , Hector thinks. _Still unleashing your harshest cruelties for yourself alone, and not even realising it._

“He didn't send me here, Isaac.”

“You said—” 

“I said he told me where to find you,” Hector interrupts. “And he only did that because I asked him where you were.”

Isaac looks wary. 

“Why?” 

And there it is. The opening Hector's been waiting for all along. He leans forward again, not letting his chance slip by. 

“I've told you why,” he says, intent. “We're alike, you and I. We're Forgemasters _._ Our methods may be different but you and I are the only ones who understand what being a Forgemaster _means_. What it's cost us to learn this magic… How it feels when we wield it.” Hector can hear his voice rising and isn't able to stop it, can't stem the tide of the one thing he's passionate about from spilling out of him in a great, crushing wave. 

“And though I may not have loved him as you did—” Isaac flinches but Hector keeps going, relentless—“though I didn't agree with wiping out humanity as he did, you and I still have the means to serve him, Isaac. Even in death.”

For the first time, Hector struggles against Isaac's iron grip, trying to raise his arms, wanting to take Isaac by the shoulders and _shake_ him, suddenly desperate to make him understand. 

“We can still remake the world, Isaac. You and I. Together we can remake the world as he wanted, but as _we_ see fit.”

Hector abruptly falls silent when he becomes aware of the fact that Isaac's face is now mere inches from his. Of course Isaac wouldn't back away, Hector thinks, and fights the urge to laugh again. He feels strangely undone, wild almost—saying things aloud that he's only ever dared to think, and even then only when he was alone, under a blazing midday sun, in those few moments away from Dracula's immense, all-encompassing presence. 

“I know you feel as I do, Isaac,” Hector adds, softer now. “You wouldn’t have saved me from Carmilla's manipulations otherwise.”

“You were naive,” Isaac says. “Not disloyal.”

“Yes,” Hector acknowledges. “Was naive. Not anymore.” 

Isaac raises an eyebrow. 

“Oh?” 

“ _Yes_ ,” Isaac says fiercely. “You taught me how to listen beyond the words that people spoke, when you told me what Carmilla was planning. You taught me to understand that no one’s ever really what they seem.”

Hector falls back against the tree, no longer trying to be free of Isaac’s hold. He's said his piece, all there was to do now was wait. And, perhaps, hope.

Isaac's face is impassive again. But he hasn't moved away, hasn’t leaned back nor eased his grip on Hector's arms, and that had to count for something. 

It's dark now, moonless, the only light coming from Hector's small campfire. He hadn't even noticed when the sun had set, so intent he'd been on his goal. The flames cast strange shapes over Isaac's face, dark flickering shadows licking at his jaw, his cheekbones, his lips. 

His lips—

Isaac tilts his head to the side, eyes narrowing as Hector lifts his gaze from Isaac’s mouth. 

“Hector,” Isaac says, the barest, driest hint of amusement in his voice. “I do believe you have not been entirely honest with me.”

Hector licks his lips. 

“How so?”

Isaac presses in closer, just a little, but it’s enough to make Hector’s breath catch in his throat.

“ _Just_ so,” Isaac replies. He looks at Hector with a kind of curious detachment before sliding a thigh between his legs. 

Hector can’t help it. His hips push forward, seeking more of that firm warmth, his mouth dropping open on a moan. 

“Is this lust, Hector?” Isaac asks, as he starts moving his thigh. 

Hector has to bite his lip against the pleasure that shoots through him before he manages a reply.

“Yes,” he admits, gasping a little. “And— _oh_ —” He cuts off when Isaac suddenly shoves him more firmly against the tree. “And need.”

“You could get this from anyone,” Isaac points out. 

_Still keeping your distance,_ Hector thinks, _even when you’re pressed right against me._

“No,” Hector says. “I couldn’t. And neither could you.”

“This is hardly complicated,” Isaac replies, and makes Hector moan again as if to prove his point. “Anyone with a spare hand could bring you to completion.”

“No,” Hector repeats, breathless, even as he can feel release building swiftly within him. “I don’t mean that. I mean _this_ —”

And Hector takes that feeling, that coiling spring of mounting tension, and directs it _inward_ , refocusing it, transforming it into something new. He doesn’t have his hammer or coins but it doesn’t matter; they were only ever just tools. _He_ was the source of his forge-magic; it came from inside him and him alone, built through practice and passion and years and years of endless, punishing work. He wills the energy into his hands, into his fingers and his eyes and his lips; it crackles along his skin, blue-white and needle-sharp, and he can't help but smile when he sees Isaac’s eyes widen, can't help laughing when he hears Isaac gasp and thrust hard against his hip. He knew Isaac would understand, eventually. He _knew_ it. 

“Share it with me,” Hector pants, as Isaac ruts against him, breathing harshly into his neck. “I _understand_ , Isaac—I understand this in a way not even Dracula did.”

And Hector can feel it, he can feel it everywhere when Isaac starts weaving his magic too. Racing up and down his spine, spiralling over his cock, pulsing hard and deep and rhythmic inside his very bones. Red sparks dance along Isaac's skin, crackling around and through the blue of his own magic, one chasing the other and burning brighter and brighter as both their pleasure builds. 

Isaac's grip on his arms finally loosens and Hector wastes no time in taking advantage of it, running his hands over the smoothly defined planes of Isaac's chest and shoulders. Magic spills from his fingers as he goes, hot and bright and strong, and Isaac shudders hard against him as searing ribbons of energy unfurl over his skin. 

“You are not,” Isaac pants, gripping Hector's hips and pushing them hard against the tree, “not him. I don't feel—” 

“I know,” Hector interrupts. He shifts a little and Isaac groans, face pressed into the crook of Hector’s neck. “I don't ask for your love, Isaac. Just your—” 

“Understanding,” Isaac pants. “Yes, I understand. I understand this.” He whispers the words into Hector's skin like he's casting a spell, imbues them with purpose like he's raising a cone of power. Hector cries out as it intensifies, against him, in him, through him, and now can _really_ feel Isaac's magic, now that Isaac is creating and not just responding—

 _Creating something new,_ Hector thinks, as their twin magics coalesce, as he brokenly moans Isaac's name. 

_Bringing life where there was none_. 

“Hector,” Isaac gasps, pulling him closer like he can't help himself, and Hector moans again at that, at the knowledge that he's broken through Isaac's unassailable self-control. Hector feels his lips brushing over his jaw, the power in Isaac's voice and very breath sweeping over his skin, caressing him, drawing his own magic out of him too. It feels inexorable, this strange synergy, this push and pull, between their magics and bodies both and suddenly, Hector realises that feeling it is not enough—he needs to taste it, too. 

He licks at Isaac's collarbone, scrapes his teeth over his throat, and is rewarded with a low hiss. 

“Did you want this, I wonder?” Hector pants into his neck. “Did you think about him biting you? Feeding on you, _using_ you?” 

Isaac shudders but doesn't answer, just rubs against him with renewed desperation. It drives Hector's own need to a peak and he throws his head back, heedless of the tree behind him. Isaac's body and magic are both warm but utterly unyielding and Hector revels at the chance to push back, hard, as hard as he possibly can—hip to hip, cock to cock, magic to magic. It feels like casting an impossible spell, like forging an army, like coming full circle; his mother's disgust, his self-imposed exile, his disappointment in the man he'd hoped would be their saviour. It all builds up in him as sharply as his pleasure, as he starts to wonder if perhaps this is what he'd been looking for all along. 

“I understand,” Isaac says again, whispering, raw, coming apart at the seams. “I understand _you._ ”

“Isaac— _God_ —”

Magic and lust and desire consume him and when Isaac licks at his throat, mirroring Hector's own actions from moments ago, Hector shuts his eyes tight as he spirals out of control. He shudders against Isaac's chest, clutching at his shoulders as he comes and comes, and comes all the harder when he feels Isaac stiffen against him before he too is pushed over the edge, coming with a choked-off moan. 

It takes them both some time to catch their breath, worn out from the magical exertion as well as the physical one. A few faint sparks, red and blue, still skip along their skin where they’re in contact with each other—Isaac’s head on Hector’s shoulder, Hector’s hands around Isaac’s neck—but it’s otherwise dark again, the campfire having died down to embers. It’s quiet too, just the odd crackle of the dying fire punctuating the sound of their heavy breaths and racing hearts.

“You never did respond,” Hector says, eventually. 

Isaac lifts his head.

“To?”

“My suggestion.”

Hector weighs the risk, then lifts his hand to Isaac’s face. Isaac doesn’t move away but he does go very still, so still that Hector knows he’s forcing himself not to jerk away. Even that small amount of progress was more than Hector had hoped for.

“Just think, Isaac,” he adds softly. “Think about what we could accomplish together.”

“In his name?”

“And ours.” Hector starts to withdraw his hand and is wholly unprepared when Isaac suddenly grabs his wrist, holding him in place. More than a small amount, then. He leans forward, emboldened, lips just shy of Isaac’s mouth. “Did you promise him that you’d be loyal to the end?”

Isaac inhales sharply.

“And beyond.”

“Well, then.” Hector pulls back, just far enough that he can meet Isaac’s eyes. “Is that your answer?”

Isaac pulls Hector’s hand away from his face. His fingers slide down, over Hector’s wrist and the back of his hand, until they’re palm to palm. A small burst of red ignites the seam where skin meets skin, and after a moment, Hector responds with a flash of blue. Then the magics merge, slowly, into a steady purple glow. 

“This is my answer,” Isaac says, nodding to their joined hands. 

Hector smiles. 

“Then let’s remake the world, Isaac.” 

He curls his fingers and squeezes, just once, and waits.

Eventually, Isaac squeezes back.

“Come,” Isaac says, releasing Hector’s hand. He steps away and starts walking towards the sand dunes in the distance. “I have some pets that you should meet.” 

“Got started on your own, hmm?”

Isaac turns and smiles. It just about reaches his eyes. 

“Perhaps,” he says. “But I will not finish that way.”

“No,” Hector agrees. “Nor will I.” 

Isaac doesn’t reply, turning away again quickly. But Hector just smiles, retrieving his hammer from near the campfire and taking his time packing up the rest of his things. There was no rush.

Because Isaac is still there, at the foot of the dunes, waiting for him.

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from the song of the same name, by The Smiths.


End file.
